I recently went to a non-chain local place that just recently opened up called the "Fire Station BBQ". Everything is made from scratch! And it tastes so good!

Repeat trips will be made.

I've got some I like too. What I'm wondering is why people go to ones that have fundamentally bad food. Do they really think bland ravioli or crunchy gyoza are something special?

The answer to that question is yes. Many people have no idea what good food is supposed to taste like. They just want something quick, palatable & not too expensive. They just don't want to cook.

One of the chain restaurants also known for its pies seems to have given up on cooking altogether. It relies on what Mr. Suzanne calls a commissary, where the food is pre-cooked and frozen. If you order a eggplant parmesan sandwich on cibatta bread they take out the frozen eggplant parmesan patty smear a little sauce on it, put on the bread and heat it up in a microwave. It tastes like it too. The pies used to be baked on premises but they're now made in a factory somewhere and delivered.

As far as chain restaurants go we like Outback because everything is cooked fresh from scratch every day. That's why they're not open for lunch. All the shrimp are hand dipped and breaded, real garlic mashed potatoes from scratch and even the soups are cooked from scratch every day.

We like to frequent independent restaurants and lucky for us there are a glut of chef/enterpreneurs opening places right and left. There's a local trattoria with absolutely awesome Italian food, a Japanese restaurant and some Thai places.

As far as people not cooking, I know people don't want to take the time but it's so worth the effort. My son and I were just talking today about what is probably the #1 comfort food - macaroni and cheese. One of my young co-workers told me that she only like the really good mac and cheese. "The one with the squeeze packet in the box," she stated. I told her that no, the really good macaroni and cheese was the one made from scratch. The next time I put together a batch of Patti LaBelle's Over the Rainbow macaroni and cheese I brought her a container. She was ga-ga over it.

We've almost stopped going out. The food at home is ALWAYS better.

There are some people who wouldn't know good food it it came up and smacked them across the face. You could set good food down in front of them, thinking they'll see the light when they taste it .......... but they don't because they've never had it before and it's foreign to their expectations. I had a cousin like that. She had never had a homemade noodle and when sat at my mother's table screwed her face up and went, eeeeuuuuwww. She was used to the stuff in a cellophane package and tasting the real thing didn't make a believer out of her either.

Not that all from scratch food is necessarily good, lol. I have eaten at some Mom and Pop diners where most everything looked like it had wallpaper paste as a base ingredient. Tasted like it too.

We have an amazing number of restaurants and fast food joints in town for the population. One of just about every chain you can name. But when the DH and I had a chance to get out to eat for the first time in ages last night, neither of us were inspired. The really good, independant restaurants are almost extinct here.

Same thing here: eateries all over the place, why seek out punky ones? Walked by The Home of Flavorless Ravoli again tonight and saw cars all through the parking lot.

Amazing.

Must be the big fancy menu. They figure they're getting something special because it looks like they're going to when they order. I guess it's like you said, "some people wouldn't know..."

Well, I'm glad it's not just here. Moved to Memphis (eventually a suburb just outside of) from New Orleans after Katrina and I have to say...I have to make regular trips back home just to get good food. Maybe I am spoiled but when you have to stop at TGIFridays for a good meal.....that's bad. Don't get me wrong....the ribs are good. But back home I could get any and everything good at the corner store. Other than that...I love Memphis though..just missing some good food. Good think I cook.

I am surrounded by chains and there are no more than 3 or four independent restaurants within ten miles of me. My daughter invited us out to dinner last week with her husband and kids and a chain had to be the choice. We finally got a table (after a 40 minute wait) in the third place we tried. I could hardly understand the glut of folks on a Sunday afternoon--shows I must live with a blanket over my head.
Back to topic--each of these chains has some kind of signature but in general the menus are practically interchangeable. We had a great time being with the fmamily, and the food was edible, and the soup was really good. But would I go back again. Probably not--felt like a zoo.

Suzanne, my husband and I went to an Outback at least a decade ago and have never returned. The steak was tender because it had been tenderized within a mm of dissolving. I see that your experience is different. Maybe things have changed. I don't think I would be able to get DH to go back no matter what.

On another level, I live near a big city and manage to get at least a couple of lunches and maybe a dinner downtown each month and indies are the rule. Walking down the street the other evening to the Plough and Stars, we passed approximately 9 restaurants in two blocks. Only one, Continental, was a chain--there are two in the city.

Back to toic again: I don't even know why folks pack themselves in to mediocre restaurtants, but I suspect that some of the reasons noted above--speed, cost, and unfamiliarity with good food--are valid. Not every home-cooked meal is good, remember, and if you grow up with a bad cook how can you be expected to know the difference.

Chains are a good way to itroduce kids to eating out. They will try somethig different and since it is a pale imitation of the real thing it is a start. Them they will be willing to try something really different. Hopefully. Remember LaChoy Chop seuy in a can? We would have that as a streacher for a little bit of leftover sunday's roast. The crunchy noodles were so different and neat to eat. Because of LaChoy I tried the real stuff. Those chains aren't just eating out, they are an entertainment and a desination. I pick locally owned places when I can. Don't get me started on the Amish restaurants and their "home cooked" meals. A big tourist attraction in this area. Ok, like everything else, some ar good and some are tourist traps.

...And then there's folks like me. lol I can taste the difference but I simply do not care. lol I'm just as happy eating something out of a can or box from Trader Joe's as dining at one of my city's world-renowned restaurants.

Right now I'm "dining" on two pieces of bread straight out of the refrigerator with a hunk of faux butter slathered on them. Works for me. lol

Karen

And you know Karen, that's perfectly OK. There are times I want things like that as well. MY very fav comfort food is a certain chicken noodle soup out of a box, LOL. I panic when I look in the cupboard and don't see my emergency supply. Like art, the beauty of anything, including food is in the eye of the beholder.

Getting back to the topic of the thread, and I could get on food soapboxes forever, is why do people go to, line up and wait for service at bad restaurants? My ex husband was one of those people. He had no problem waiting for an hour in a queue going out the door into the parking lot for eggs and bacon on a Sunday morning. I think it was a ritual for him, left-over from this single days and a social outing to see and be seen by his aquaintances. For the elderly, like my mother, who seldom liked to go out to eat, going out is a chance to do something different than be stuck in a house since she no longer drives. It doesn't even have to do much with food. One place is as good as the other.

To young people, caveat emptor. For one month, I challenge you, keep records of your food dollars. You wouldn't think twice about going to McSomething and laying out twelve dollars for two large burger meals. For twelve dollars worth, I can even do rib steaks at home. Going out is fun and fine, if it's not habitual.

Lots of the people in line at the so-so chains probably never learned how to cook so going out is more fun than having food delivered. I am amazed at how many people I know who do not even own a decent paring knife let alone know how to use one.

I went to Cheeseburger in Paridise for the first time last week. It was fun, and the food seemed real, especially the sweet potato fries.

Oh yes!! Cheeseburger in Paradise! There's a pork sandwich, Peruvian Pork, something like that...it's wonderful. The sweet potato fries are fantastic. I could easily skip the meal and just get a double order of the sweet potato fries. I'm going to have to find a recipe to make them at home. Probably involves a mandoline and I'm sure there's not a person under 25 that can tell you what that is. Nope, not a musical instrument.

Sometimes I wish we were a little closer to a metropolitan area where we could have accsess to fine dining restaurants but when reality sets in I guess I'm happy living in the sticks 250 miles from Omaha and 285 miles from Denver. There are a few, very few, limited menu cafes that have superb local dishes and one wonderful Brazilian restaurant but otherwise it is Runza or Subway and they always seem to be very busy.

What I miss most in Texas is good mom & pop Italian restaurants. There were a ton of them when we lived in St. Louis, which had a vibrant Italian community, but unfortunately the immigrant trains full of Italians didn't seem to make it down to Texas.

When we lived in Dallas, which has to be restaurant central for the US, we looked & looked but never found a decent place to get Italian food. The pasta was always overcooked & then would just be drowned in marinara sauce. Plus they seemed to have developed their own idea of what were Appropriate side dishes - specifically serving what seemed to be Parker House rolls with a dish of marinara sauce to dip them into(!!) We were dumbfounded, but everyone else seemed to love them.

I guess in the lack of authentic ethnic cuisine, people just improvise.

Andie, you well know that Chicago is Italian food central. Fantastic Italian restaurants everywhere, northern...southern...Sicilian...anything you can think of. So, back in the late 60's I found myself transplanted to San Antonio, Texas. I was dying for Italian food so we called the local diner near Billy Mitchell Village where we were living, and we ordered a sausage pizza. Got it home and we were salivating over the prospect of a pizza. We opened the box to find something that generally resembled one, but it had BREAKFAST PORK SAUSAGES artfully arranged in a wagon wheel shape. It was the worst pizza I've ever eaten.

Gandle, I had to search "Runza" because I couldn't believe there would be a fast-food Runza place. REALLY! I'm amazed. There's another food that can't in any way, shape or form taste like the real thing. Runza's are a Nebraska phenom, but my aunt was a Russian from an area that was alternately Russian and German. She made something called Biruk which is basically a Runza. Hers was a fabulous yeast dough square filled with the beef/onion/cabbage mixture and brushed with real butter. I made it my business to learn to make them and if my childrens friends have any hint that I'm making Biruk they descend upon the house like a swarm of locusts. Now that's a comfort food!

In our area (PA-back in July!!!) there are a number of good restaurants. They span the full spectrum of types...small ethnic, through fancy-schmancy. Maybe it helps that we're in an upper level college town as well as a tourist destination. Of course we also have a full helping of abysmal, continuously-packed chain types.

Worst restaurant?

Worst weird cooking - a Mexican place in the town we lived in in Denmark...I laugh just thinking about it. It is funny because Danes have a thing for carrots and they seemed to find their way into every dish at this restaurant-and not in a good way.

Worst restaurant meal ever -a chain seafood place. It still escapes me why we went there...curiosity? They were always packed so we wondered what the attraction was. Over an hour wait for our meal after a computer glitch lost our order. When it did come it was so salty it was inedible.

q(-_-)p

Worst seafood chain? Dead Lobster, hands down. And places like Long John Silver's we won't even talk about.

And a Mexican restaurant in Denmark? That is almost too scary to think about. We went to one in London out of curiosity about 6 years ago. It was sad, sad, sad. They even managed to screw up a Margarita.

"Dead Lobster"! Haw haw haw. But wouldn't the proper spelling be "Ded Lobster"?

We visited a Macaroni Grill the first day it opened. (We didn't realize it was the opening day when we stopped.) Anyway, the food was quite good and the waitstaff went out of their way to make the experience a good one. Second time - food not quite as good, tired lettuce in the salad, etc., third time - food not good at all. Waitstaff was always on the ball, but the food wasn't.

Do restaurants really go out of their way to make the first day a good experience and then go downhill after that? I can't believe that they actually plan that. Do they think people will keep coming back in spite of the food? Not I. We'll not go there again.

Some friends and I met at a new Chinese place once. Couldn't believe how good it was - like homemade.

It didn't make it.